They cannot conceive of the possibility that unusually heavy winter snow is connected with less than usual winter cold in cold zones, something that pretty much all of us who grew up in frigid zones understand perfectly well. They are so confused that they find this perfectly ordinary fact of mundane reality grounds for mockery.

It’s quite a spectacle.

(Igloos in DC are another matter. A rare snow event in a non-snowy zone is not evidence of a warming trend. Of course, there’s more to climate disruption than just warming, but at least they are making some semblance of sense in that case, at least polemically, as the relationship is a bit complicated.)

Heh. Typical Tobis, as Willis would say he’s “all hat and no cattle“. I’ll get to that in a moment. At least this time he didn’t go off in an F-word fusillade which has made him famous for the record number of F-words in a single posting. I’m not able to comment there at his blog, as some comments I’ve posted in the past have never seen the light of day. But, I have to laugh at the juxtaposition of Dana Nuccitelli’s comment with the Tobis comment policy statement right below it. So, let’s look at some data.The popular warmist theory is that reduced summer sea ice causes the enhanced snow effect, and that sea ice reduction is caused by global warming, but it isn’t cut and dried proof. Then there is the months-long lag problem between reduced sea ice and weather.Dr. Judith Curry has discussed the science in her paper from Georgia Tech here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/05/impact-of-declining-arctic-sea-ice-on-winter-snowfall/ (h/t to Mosher)Joe D’Aleo also posted a critique to the Liu and Curry paper on WUWT here:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/increasing-winter-cold-in-recent-years-and-the-arctic/From a previous WUWT essay by Willis Eschenbach, who points out that neither essay compared sea ice and snow area, I repost this graph. Readers (and Tobis too) should find the correlation between Arctic sea ice and Snow area.

Figure 2. Arctic sea ice area (blue) and Northern Hemisphere snow area (red). Upper panel shows actual data. Lower panel shows the anomalies of the same data, with the same units (note different scales). The R^2 of the snow and ice anomalies is 0.01, meaninglessly small. The R^2 of the first differences of the anomalies is 0.004, equally insignificant. Neither of these are significantly improved by lags of up to ± 6 months. SNOW DATAICE DATA

Willis wrote then:

I’m not going to say a whole lot about this graph. It is clear that in general the arctic ice area has been decreasing for twenty years or so. It is equally clear that the northern hemisphere snowfall has not been increasing for the last twenty years. Finally, it is clear that there is no statistical relationship between decreased ice and increased snow.

Speaking of statistical relationships, here’s a couple.

The graph below plots annual snowfall vs December to April temperature, for all Colorado USHCN stations which have been continuously active since at least 1920.

And for those that would say that is too small a sample size, let’s take it up a notch. Below is all USHCN station temperatures for December-April in the CONUS versus snowfall.

Here is all USHCN stations annual temperature in the CONUS versus snowfall.

Clearly snowfall increases with decreased temperature. The three graphs above were plotted by Steve Goddard.

But back to Tobis’ main point, in which is he’s claiming (bold mine):

They cannot conceive of the possibility that unusually heavy winter snow is connected with less than usual winter cold in cold zones, something that pretty much all of us who grew up in frigid zones understand perfectly well. They are so confused that they find this perfectly ordinary fact of mundane reality grounds for mockery.

Well, there’s data for that question too.

Note the middle graph in particular, showing below normal temperatures to the present. All temperatures in Celsius.

It really is rather hard to make a claim that “global warming did it” when data says otherwise.

So other than an angry rant basically saying “global warming caused it cuz we say it does”, what has Tobis got in the way of a factual argument? Where is his supporting data? And he didn’t answer the question: “If global warming caused this snowfall event, what caused the heavy snow 100 years ago when CO2 levels were below Hansen’s “safe” 350ppm?”

His two commenters didn’t answer the question either. They also offered no supporting data.

They and Tobis (and the WWF zealot with the original comment) have bupkis.

For the record I grew up in the midwest, and faced the great blizzard of 1978 with its exceptionally cold temperatures and huge snowfalls, plus the Chicago Blizzard of 1979 (to name a couple I experienced firsthand). Tobis and friends seem to think that living in Northern California now somehow disqualifies me from understanding snow and temperature. That’s probably the lamest argument ever put forth by that guy. Imagine if I made the same argument because Tobis lives in Austin, TX. where “snowfall is rare“.

Alexei Kokorin, director of the climate and energy program at WWF Russia, is the same person who claimed that malaria never occurred in Russia before late 20th century warming. He claimed that malaria for the first time entered Russia because of global warming in 1990′s.

Mr. KOKORIN: (Through translator) There were no registered cases of malaria in the Moscow region until the 1970s. Since then, we’ve seen 400,000 cases of so-called three-day malaria. That’s like a bad flu for healthy adults but can be very serious for children and the elderly. It’s far too many cases.

Three day Malaria? Must be the Vodka.

But the truth about the cause says otherwise, from the World Health Organization report on Malaria in Russia (which they almost eradicated in the 1960s) here.

Profound socioeconomic changes in the newly independent states (NIS) in the 1990s had a negative impact on the malaria situation in the Russian Federation. Epidemics in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan in the early 1990s, along with intensive population movement from these countries into the Russian Federation, brought about an increase in malaria cases.

Not one mention of warming or temperature in that article, only socioeconomic causes.

Looks like the WWF zealot has bupkis too.

UPDATE: Within a few minutes of publication Mr. Tobis posted a rebuttal comment here (because unlike his blog, it is easy to post a comment here immediately) that said:

You’re missing the point. Obfuscation aside, the point is that excessive February snow in Moscow means that February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn than anomalously cold. Which you ought to know.

Here is my reply:

Tobis writes: “February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn[sic] than anomalously cold.”

But it isn’t, the data I presented from the Moscow Observatory shows a below normal temperature in January into February. And, this is a single event we are talking about in the newspaper article, not a trend, not a long term climate issue.For more on snow and temperature see this: http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/%28Gh%29/guides/mtr/fcst/prcp/rs.rxml

The claim about this snow event being driving by AGW is the same logical fallacy you and your buddies embraced with the Moscow heat wave in 2010, which was a weather event, not a climate event. And, that’s not just my opinion, NOAA shares it too.

If global warming was creating more snow in that area, wouldn’t there be an upwards trend?

Ya still got bupkis Mike. – Anthony

UPDATE2: I recalled on the drive into the office today that Tobis made this claim in 2010 related to lack of snow at the winter Olympics:

“But there’s another lesson here, too. Don’t overreach. Is there anything in any particular weather event (except prehaps [sic] ones far more bizarre than this one) that offers strong evidence for or against any theory of climate change?

…

But big snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic or the South, particularly in El Nino years, are not evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change either. They are not the sort of thing we particularly expect more of because of human interference. At best it seems to me that the case is uncertain.”

You really shouldn’t try to cover up errors with more errors and some added lies.

Maybe you think you are being unclear, but your choice of words reveals that you are just being a sanctimonious fool and using the issue as an excuse to slog off on skeptics in general. Your comments about “deniers” and where they live and warm climate etc, have no basis in reality, and your insistence of “all I said was” doesn’t jibe with your original printed claims.

There’s no connection that you’ve demonstrated between the snow in Moscow and global warming, and you’ve offered nothing but sputtering rhetoric and condescension instead of substance to back up your ridiculous claims. This was a weather event, formed in the clash of air masses, cold and dry -vs- moist and warm, just as snow has formed since weather on Earth began. It is a simple case of patterns, much like the Russian heat wave during the summer of 2010.

Here in the image below, we have a meridional S-N flow pattern, pulling in warm air and moisture ahead of a low, which has been fairly persistent throughout the winter. Moscow has received several similar episodes of overrunning precipitation, with Moscow wedged between strong high pressure to its east and low pressure to its west. Its a persistent pattern driven funnel effect, nothing more.

If there was zonal flow instead, no big snow events would be happening in Moscow. As it stands, warmer moister air must be drawn northward to produce that sort of snow event.

This image from WeatherBell.com is a GFS model forecast, and it shows more snow to likely hit Moscow Friday as warmth/moisture from low pressure driven advection is drawn northward. Rinse, repeat, and you have a snow machine.

It was not a climate event, because as I demonstrated, there is no evidence of a longer trend for more snow in the area. There is also no evidence that the pump was “primed” for more snow by global warming.

The only reason this is an issue now is that you and others are losing the climate sensitivity argument due to lack of observed warming, and you and others are looking for linkages where there are none to be had. If you have something of substance (data, graphs, etc) to prove your point, you are welcome to post them here.

Otherwise your comments are just opinionated noise from somebody who doesn’t get the difference between weather events and climate, except when it suits you.

114 thoughts on “Michael Tobis has bupkis”

Snow is a significant factor in colder temperatures, both in the day when it reflects more sunlight than the ground, and also at night, because snow is a better radiator than the ground. It gets significantly colder at night with snow cover than surrounding areas with no snow cover. Heavy snow makes for a colder winter. At least that’s our experience here in ND.

That’s why I love this blog. I’m a layman, so much of the more technical stuff goes over my head, but I really do appreciate the data presented here to buttress the claims made. It certainly is a breath of fresh air when compared to the claims made by the other side, many of which are based purely on emotion or faith, with no data to corroborate. Keep up the great work.

They made a prediction and because their prediction failed they are now curve fitting every natural weather event and calling it dangerous anthropogenic climate change, Where have I seen this happen before?

Anthony, this is tough. I admit it takes strenuous effort to read and understand the information you post here. The assimilation of any information requires energy. I believe if you’re told something and it instantly feels good, it is not information. A confirmation, maybe.

Talking at this level to the crowd that is used to be fed instantly palatable factoids is a waste of time. They will always dismiss everything you say as nonsense because they can’t be bothered to make an effort to understand it. They don’t need to. They are happy the way they are, and you can only make them happier by confirming their beliefs.

Tobis was talking about virtual weather and temperatures. In his head, there is a clear correlation and he is able to pick real weather events and use them as examples that prove his virtual weather theories. How dare you show actual data. Are you denying the virtual weather world?

The Chicago Blizzard of 1979. That helped defeat Michael Bilandic in his run to continue being mayor of Chicago. Almost all transportation in the city was shut down and a reporter ask ask Bilandic why the city workers weren’t getting the the streets cleared quicker. Bilandic responded that he didn’t know what the reporter was talking about as he did not have any problem getting his car out of his garage and driving to work. The voters realized that Bilandic had had his alleyway and path to work plowed while all the major streets and bus routes were still buried in snow. Results: Jane Byrne wins Democratic primary and mayoral election.

You’re missing the point. Obfuscation aside, the point is that excessive February snow in Moscow means that February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn than anomalously cold. Which you ought to know.

REPLY: “February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn[sic] than anomalously cold.”

But it isn’t, the data I presented shows a below normal temperature leading into February. And, this is a single event we are talking about in the newspaper article, not a trend, not a long term climate issue. Its the same logical fallacy you and your buddies embraced with the Moscow heat wave in 2010, which was a weather event, not a climate event. And, that’s not just my opinion, NOAA shares it too.

Could it possibly be that the breakdown of internal passport controls in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev and their removal under the Russian Federation has led more people to show up in Moscow with malaria? Nah, couldn’t be.

He must have missed out on the Siberian malaria epidemic that took place in the 1920s and 1930s, or the many malaria deaths that occurred during the digging of the Erie canal. Malaria is primarily a tropical disease — roughly half a billion cases a year occur, killing 1-2 million people, with 90% of the cases in sub-Saharan Africa. 20% of all childhood deaths occur due to malaria, which works out to a child dying every 30 seconds from the disease. But “local temperature” isn’t any sort of barrier to malaria per se — it is perfectly happy being transmitted by mosquitoes all the way up to the Arctic circle — it is rather a question of the range and prevalence of the right kinds of mosquitoes and most important of all, prevalence of plasmodium in the human population!

There are no animal reservoirs for Plasmodium malariae!

This latter is the crucial point. Once one eradicates malaria in a human population, it remains eradicated until infected humans move in and are bitten by the right kinds of mosquitoes. The range of Anopheles mosquitoes is plenty wide enough to transmit the disease anywhere, but the advent of electricity, modern medicine and transportation, screened windows, insect repellents, closed automobiles all have greatly reduced human-mosquito contact. I get bitten by fewer mosquitoes in a typical year than a person living in an open hut in subtropical Africa would be bitten by in a single day.

Climate change is not a factor in the mixing of human populations that re-introduces the plasmodium vector into geographical areas that had all but eradicated it, but the availability of energy absolutely is. Cheap electricity and prosperity are the worst enemy of malaria — air conditioned houses and cars keep mosquitoes outside of closed windows, water management and drainage eliminate mosquito breeding areas, cheap manufacturing of screens and good clothing and the availability of repellents all reduce the requisite interaction needed to maintain the transmission chain and the prevalence of the disease in any given community. Insecticides produced with electricity can directly affect mosquito populations (sometimes with negative or unexpected side effects on other animal or insect populations).

I’m guessing that nearly all of the “surplus” deaths attributed to AGW are bogus numbers associated with a presumed but unverified expansion of malarial deaths — looking at the supposed boundaries of “subtropical” regions and how they are “supposed” to have changed, and then doing a multiplication of the new area by the old rates of death. I very much doubt that there is any sort of reliable counting going on.

However, the good thing about malaria is that it is a disease, like smallpox, that we could completely eliminate in as little as one year if we came up with an effective vaccine and administered to everybody, and then aggressively treated every single case as it arose. With no animal reservoirs, malaria is vulnerable to complete eradication. All we have to do is eliminate or strongly reduce the disease in its one host reservoir — humans — and keep the pressure on until the last plasmodium-infected human has been cleared of the disease.

We could probably do this without the vaccine if we put one tenth of the money we’ve wasted on carbon trading and ameliorating AGW into the aggressive treatment of the disease and the aggressive economic development of the impoverished peoples of the parts of the world where the disease thrives, not because it can’t live anywhere, but because without air conditioning and screens and repellants and cars and insecticides and modern medical clinics and water control and all of the other aspects of civilization that we take for granted and that are the real reason I don’t worry about getting malaria while I’m out fishing in NC, the people live in constant contact with both the mosquitoes and with other infected people who have the disease. We cannot reasonably eliminate the mosquitoes, but we could greatly reduced their habitat. We can, and probably will over the next two decades, first reduce the number of people who have the disease at all, and then eradicate the disease.

We lived in Terre Haute, Indiana, during the 1978 and 1979 blizzards. Even halfway downstate, those were serious storms. Back in 1977, Mayor Larrison sold off the snow removal equipment because it had not been used for several mild winters. During the 1978 storm the order went out from the Indiana State Police to stay off the roads. Even so, they and other emergency folk had to rescue dozens of people from I-74 and other big roads. Terre Haute was at a standstill. A young and silly person of 36 at the time, I tried to drive to school (Indiana State University) in my 1968 VW Squareback, a marvelous and fuel efficient car, but got caught in a monster snowdrift and managed to blow the engine. I had to leave the car where it was (it had good company) and walk home. About that time Mayor Larrison appeared on the TV noon news, and reporters were haranguing him about the sold-off snowplows. They asked him what he planned to do about the snow-clogged streets. The mayor drew up to his full height and intoned, “In His infinite wisdom, God has sent the snow. In His own good time, He will take it away.” The voters took the mayoralty away from Mr. Larrison in the next election.

I think Michael Tobis said it best about recent snowy insights made by Michael Tobis-

“”I think [Michael Tobis] should [snip . . “be quiet” . . mod], or at least stick to such matters, if any, where [he] has reason for confidence in what [he] says.”
Michael Tobis, November, 2011

Maybe M Tobis has decided to follow the brilliant pioneering work of David Appell and try to lure visitors over to his blog by posting clever, insightful comments at ‘evil, oil-funded denier’ websites.

Of course we all remember that the warmists predicted exactly the opposite, a vastly diminished snow cover. Then there is the fact that this cold front extends all the way to Britain which hardly makes it regional.
And then there is his certain knowledge of where skeptics live.
This is not a serious person.

I take it, obfuscation is precisely what I observed in my previous comment: potential information. It is new; it is complex; you don’t know where to place it; some of it may be irrelevant; some related in ways you don’t recognise. It may all be obfuscation, by the looks of it. By the same token, everything written everywhere may be obfuscation. Avoid reading, then.

> … the point is that excessive February snow in Moscow means that February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn than anomalously cold.

It means no such thing. It only means that snowfall being an exothermic transition, it causes a momentary warming while it happens. Then you find yourself in deep-frozen snow or warm snow depending on subsequent weather.

Well, according to Ryan Maue’s map over at weather bell, Moscow has indeed been warmer than normal in the first 4 days of February: http://models.weatherbell.com/temperature.php – but it has been way colder than normal in the first 35 days of 2013. So now we know that Tobis thinks 4 days is climate, but 5 weeks is weather ;-p

mtobis (@mtobis) says:
February 6, 2013 at 8:19 am
You’re missing the point. Obfuscation aside, the point is that excessive February snow in Moscow means that February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn than anomalously cold. Which you ought to know.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Mike,
I’d be interested to know why you think this should be the case. As Anthony pointed out, the data shows otherwise, but let’s put that aside for a moment. Why should heavy snowfall result in warmer temps? The physics would suggest otherwise.

All that LW that would normally be emitted from ground surface to be in part absorbed by ghg’s and re-radiated back to earth is in fact blocked by heavy snowfall. Snow is an excellent insulator. I grew up in a part of the world where we used to make jokes about the wimps in Chicago and their 79 blizzard because we got blizzards like that a dozen times a year. So you can’t suggest that I don’t know snow.

We used to shovel snow up against the sides of buildings because it cut heating fuel consumption by 1/2 or more. In years where there was little snow cover, temps would be warmer than usual because the earth itself was radiating heat that came back via ghe. When teaching kids about winter camping we used to take them out in a fresh snowfall and show them how the snow on top was loose, but at the very bottom was a thin sheet of ice with a layer of air (yes air!) underneath it. It formed when the snow first fell, melting and refreezing when it struck the earth, then more snow on top, trapping the warmth below.

In spring, we would see the opposite. Counter intuitive though it may seem, years with plenty of snow cover tended to exhibit early springs. As the snow itself was warmer in the bottom layers than it would have been otherwise due to trapping the earth’s warmth below, it would melt more readily and faster in spring. It was the years with little snow cover that featured late springs. Air temps would often be higher over the course of the year because of LW from the earth and ghe, but in spring we paid for it big time. So much heat left the earth that the earth itself was very cold, frost lines would be 2 feet deeper than normal. Come spring, all the warmth of the sun had to go into raising the temperature of the dirt itself before it stopped sucking the heat out of the atmosphere and delaying spring by weeks.

So those are my observations about snow cover from living in a climate not unlike Moscow’s (but colder) for a few decades. Those are my observations of the physics that lead me to believe the opposite of what you suggest.

If you could explain the observations and physics that suggest otherwise, I’d be interested.

mtobis (@mtobis) says:
February 6, 2013 at 8:19 am
You’re missing the point. Obfuscation aside, the point is that excessive February snow in Moscow means that February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn than anomalously cold.
===================================

According to the data, it’s been anomalously cold (in Moscow) from Dec. up to the present. When is this anomalously warm weather expect to arrive?

Is there no end of silliness of those legions of warmists and their followers? At least I can take heart in knowing that I question things. A “Virtual Weather Denier”? I think I will print that off and post it at my work cubicle so I know EXACTLY what I am “denying”. Virtual Weather. Wow. Thanks Anthony for the work here – a chack daily to see what contortions the AGW fanatics have woven themselves into. Snowfall in Moscow – who heard of such a thing? That would be like hearing of sunshine in Hawaii???

Temperature during the snow event was 8 C above normal. Thus there is no intrinsic “logic fail” in considering it a warming-related event as you originally implied. That neither proves nor disproves the case. As you point out, no single weather event can, though some persistent patterns (Hoerling’s mistaken NOAA analysis notwithstanding) can offer strong evidence. I’ve argued that before and I will argue happily argue it again.

But all your backpedaling and obfuscation aside, this snow event is associated with a large warm anomaly. Wherever it fits in to the balance of evidence, it is a significant warm event, not a cold event at all, and that’s why your mockery of it is woefully misplaced.

REPLY: I’m sorry Mike, but a weather event has noting to do with climate and AGW, look at the long term snow graphs from Rutgers. Besides, previous AGW claims were that it would REDUCE snow. You guys are just grasping at whatever is convenient for the moment like you do with storms, heatwaves, rainfall events, and anything else that makes news.

I point out with data that colder weather yields increased snowfall, you say that a single warm event increased snowfall. It isn’t that simple. Snowfall just doesn’t happen due to anomalously warm conditions, it happens when a winter cold front meets warm moist air. That’s called weather. You should know this. I have to head out to work, but maybe one of our readers can pull up a synoptic map for the event. – Anthony

M Tobias states: “It is interesting that most deniers seem to live in warm climates.”
========================
From a “denier” in Wisconsin, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a “warm climate”, please send us some global warming, quickly!

I live in Alaska. I believe that CAGW is a fraud, and that you and yours are either useful idiots, our outright fraudsters.

I do have a question for you. I will be moving to a much more tropical area this summer. Since, according to your “scientific” analysis, folks like me tend to live in warm climates, what happens when a CAGW infidel moves from a cold climate to a hot climate?

Oh, and as long as I’m here, could you answer one more question for me? Are you a fraud or just an idiot? I’m taking a survey. Hmmm, going to have to include both in the possible answer set…

Warmist climate scientists are unable to account for these climate disruptions (snow, drought, flood, hurricane) by appeal only to natural causes. And the disruptions have turned out to be much more unpredictable by their models than previously thought. More funding is required so that they can gain a better understanding of the devastating link between manmade CO2 and these terrible climate disruptions. A lot more funding. If you doubt this, then you should consider this argument: “These scientists are unable to account for climate disruptions by appealing only to natural causes. Therefore, the disruptions are attributable to manmade CO2 (and these scientists deserve more funding for research into the link between the two.)” It is an airtight argument. Or “Their models have turned out to be all wrong. Therefore, they need a lot more funding.” which is also airtight. It’s good to give more money to scientists who have been unable to account for or predict events. If you’ve already given them a lot of money, their failure is evidence that the amount wasn’t enough.

Well, this is a first. I actually think (and have commented at P3) that I think Tobis may be correct and you may be wrong. Growing up in Decatur Illinois we often heard the phrase ‘too cold to snow.’ Usually with an expletive involved.

M Tobis says: “Temperature during the snow event was 8 C above normal. Thus there is no intrinsic “logic fail” in considering it a warming-related event as you originally implied.”
=================
So let me see if I have this correct. The average temperature anomaly in Moscow from Jan 1 to today is -1.33C. However, temperature during the snow event was 8C above normal, therefore the snow event was caused by AGW. Huh. Guess I don’t understand this new “science”. Sounds a lot like religious dogma, no?

Tobis is so clueless it’s hard to believe. The planet has warmed by only ≈0.7ºC over the past century and a half. From that minuscule warming comes the misguided belief that climate catastrophe is right around the corner.

There is no scientific evidence to support that false belief. The past 150 years have been extremely benign by historical standards. In the past, global temperatures have abruptly changed by tens of degrees, on decadal time scales — and during times when CO2 was very low.

Tobis and his fellow travelers have invented the “carbon” scare based on …nothing. There are no empirical measurements supporting the belief that CO2 makes any difference. It is a conjecture; a belief. CO2 may cause some very minor warming, but it is too small to measure.

My suggestion to Tobis would be to run back to your thinly-trafficked alarmist blogs, where a small handful of anti-science True Believers get all wound up over something that is simply not happening.

mtobis (@mtobis) says:
February 6, 2013 at 9:20 am
Temperature during the snow event was 8 C above normal. Thus there is no intrinsic “logic fail” in considering it a warming-related event as you originally implied.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

Over 90% of all snowfall occurs between +2 and -6 degrees C. In other words, almost any snowfall occurs at temps several degrees above winter norms for a region like Moscow. If it didn’t warm up briefly to that temperature range, it couldn’t snow in appreciable quantities.

But the warm period while it snows is brief, and the air temps for the days and weeks afterward are inevitably colder than usual because snow insulates, keeps heat in the earth, instead of letting it radiate to the atmosphere where ghe can send it back downward. I explained same above to you, which you ignored.

thomaswfuller2 says:
February 6, 2013 at 9:51 am
Well, this is a first. I actually think (and have commented at P3) that I think Tobis may be correct and you may be wrong. Growing up in Decatur Illinois we often heard the phrase ‘too cold to snow.’ Usually with an expletive involved.
Makes for an interesting conversation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I grew up in a climate that makes Decatur Illinois look balmy, and we had the same saying. But it means the opposite of what you seem to think. Large snowfalls are almost always associated with a brief warm period (hours) several degrees above normal. In other words, +8 degrees during a major snowfall is the norm!

I thought the hypothesis was that slow warming was CO2 caused and would become an important driver of climate/weather only after the mid-point of this century (the 2050s or 2060s). What happened to that timeline?

Statements are made by certain folks about temperature without regard to the differences in altitude and the processes going on. A cold surface temperature does not make for deep snow if that extends upward (with normal lapse rate) and without horizontal movements of air masses. Think of North America’s western mountains, say Mt. Baker in Washington State. The source of moisture is the air moving from off the Pacific Ocean. In contrast, interior Washington State can have a very cold air flow from the northern continental interior (think the Great Slave Lake area) and get almost no snow.
During the 1978 winter we lived in northern Idaho. We did not get much snow but I don’t even like to think about how cold it was. Meanwhile, I will ask where the moisture came from that brought the “huge snowfalls” to the USA Midwest? Did the Arctic Ocean ice disappear the previous summer. Do the charts not show more ice then than now? It is hard to believe that mid-west snow came from Arctic moisture. I’ll guess that air masses from different source regions met there, did a little dance, and then moved on. One doesn’t need CO2 to explain snow and cold at the latitude of Moscow, or Chicago.

I notice that Mr. Tobis still thinks using the term “deniers” helps communication about this topic. Talk about being “clueless.” Also, I lived in Atlanta for 6 weeks in the summer of 1970. I must have picked up my “denier” characteristics then because, otherwise, I have always lived where cold and snow is common in the winter. I visited his site before this – once. Nice you provided the link, but no thanks!

“For the record I grew up in the midwest, and faced the great blizzard of 1978 with its exceptionally cold temperatures and huge snowfalls, plus the Chicago Blizzard of 1979 (to name a couple I experienced firsthand). ”
========================================================================
I still live in that part of Illinois and recall those snow storms !!!!
Hated every minute of it !!!

Did someone hit you in the head with a brick this morning or are you naturally dense? I refer you to the “US Snowfall Vs Annual Temperature” graph above. Clearly, warmer weather means less snow, not more. Hear that ringing? It’s the clue phone, and it’s for you. Please pick up and try not to be an embarrassment to your posterity, if you have any.

In the office now, and recalled on the drive in that Tobis made this claim in 2010 related to lack of snow at the winter Olympics

“But big snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic or the South, particularly in El Nino years, are not evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change either. They are not the sort of thing we particularly expect more of because of human interference. At best it seems to me that the case is uncertain.”

2 June 1934,
Washington: $6,000 million aid is voted for farmers in drought-stricken areas.

21 June 1934,
US A heat wave in the Mid-West kills 206 people in three days.

11 April 1935,
The dust storm that swept across the USA’s “Bread Basket” created a staggering trail of destruction. Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Okalahoma, Texas and New Mexico were all affected. Increasingly severe dust storms are hanging like a black scourge over half the country, wiping out millions of dollars’ worth of crops, forcing thousands to flee their homes and paralyzing all activity in some districts. While humans can protect themselves with masks during a storm, livestock suffer miserably. The incidence of dust pneumonia among children is growing. Little relief is in sight, as dust piles up inside houses; schools and business are closed; traffic is stopped and bereaved families cannot bury their dead. In Texas, even the birds are afraid to fly.

5 August 1935,
Brilliant sunshine lured more Britons to the coast and countryside than on any previous Bank Holiday. So many people poured into Brighton – police estimated there were 500,000 day visitors – that in places the shingle was invisible beneath the bodies.

10 December 1937,
Glasgow: 34 die and 92 are injured when an express train crashes in a blizzard.

11 July 1938,
Eskimos in the Arctic complain of a heat wave: it is 67 degrees F (19C).

1940-1949

17 January 1940,
UK: The Thames freezes for the first time as a cold wave strikes Europe.

19 January 1940,
Finland: The Russo-Finnish winter war; the intense Cold – in Karelia it is 57 degrees below zero – has stopped all action on all fronts, and an appalling number of troops on both sides have been frozen to death.

30 April 1940,
Norway: Snow has been falling heavily in the region, and this has delayed the landing of British troops, who are not equipped for arctic operations.

21 November 1941,
USSR: With the prevailing temperature 27 degrees below freezing point, the unprepared Germans are seizing the warm winter clothing of the Russian people in the occupied territory.

12 February 1947,
UK: Heavy snowstorms and subzero temperatures are combining with serious fuel shortage to bring Britain to its economic knees. Over four million workers have been made idle by power cuts. Non-stop blizzards have stopped all shipping in the channel. The Great North road is blocked for 22 miles by ten-foot drifts.

6 March 1947,
UK: 300 roads are blocked and 15 towns cut off by the snow as the appalling weather continues.

March 1947,
UK: Like a great deal of the country, the town of Shrewsbury has suffered in the floods after the big freeze.

1950-1959

31 January 1954,
UK: 23 people are reported to have died in accidents on frozen Ice as wintry weather grips Britain.

31 January 1954,
UK: 23 people are reported to have died in accidents on frozen Ice as wintry weather grips Britain.

25 February 1955,
UK: 70 main roads remain impassable because of snow and ice.

1970-1979

7 August 1975,
London: The capital has its hottest day for 35 years with temperatures of 32 degrees C.

2 June 1976,
London: The city has a record temperature of 95 degrees F (35C).

14 July 1976,
London: Publication of the Drought Bill to tackle Britain’s worst drought in 250 years.

31 August 1976,
UK: There had not been a summer like it this century; temperatures soared and all parts of the UK basked in record hours of sunshine. Suddenly it was time for barbecues, bikinis in Hyde Park, endless queues for ice creams and cold drinks … and drought. Industry suffered water rationing, and several companies in the Midlands were forced to curtail their working week. Forest fires raged in the south – and fire men watched impotently as hundreds of acres of the New Forest and other woodland were destroyed. With no sign of a break in the weather, the government was becoming increasingly worried by a potentially disastrous national water shortage. Reservoirs were drying up and their clay bottoms were cracking in the heat. Householders were advised to use their bath water to water their gardens, to avoid over-flushing their lavatories and to place bricks in their cisterns. Dirty cars were patriotic and draconian penalties were introduced for the use of garden hoses. The avuncular sports Minister Denis Howell, was created “Minister for Drought” and warned that unless consumption was cut by a half all over Britain, the country would almost certainly face water rationing until Christmas. Then, today the rains came and Britons could complain, once more, about their awful climate.

20 February 1978,
UK: South-west England suffers its worst blizzard for many years.

1980-1989

January 1985,
Nice: The Arctic weather puts the beach at Nice under a blanket of snow.

2 February 1986,
Europe: Over 34 deaths are reported as blizzards and freezing weather sweeps much of Western Europe.

26 July 1987,
Greece: Over 700 die from heat wave in Greece. Hospitals and military clinics were struggling to handle an influx of casualties as temperatures continue to soar.

Tobis’ claim is as ridiculous as Suzuki’s about the absence of snow on Cypress Mountain during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics… Moreover, Tobis should know that the energy dissipated in storms depends on the cold/warm gradient. Had he checked satellite images he would have realized this snow resulted from a deep southerly penetration by a powerful MPH -i.e. cold, HP air- that advected moist warmer eastern mediterranean air over western Russia. As usual warmists have only a very sketchy understanding of weather and every time they try to connect it to their pet theory, they fall flat on their face.

Three day malaria! As one who was unfortunate enough to get malaria back in 1952 (in the Rhodesian lowveld) it is my opinion that anybody who believes in a three day variety should be in an institution caring for the mentally deficient.

I don’t think Calgary is in a “warm climate”. And I am a skeptic. I admit that the winter seems to be getting milder but I have never “denied” the existance of Climate Change. But arguing against these AGW fanatics is worse than hitting your head against a brick wall. My previous post mentioned contortions and Tobias’ posts prove that they wind themselves up like a pretzel and can’t even keep track of their own “arguments”.

@D.B. Stealey says: February 6, 2013 at 9:56 am
Tobis is so clueless it’s hard to believe. The planet has warmed by only ≈0.7ºC over the past century and a half. From that minuscule warming comes the misguided belief that climate catastrophe is right around the corner.
==========================================================================

Not only that, we’ve had two, maybe three, periods of warmer climate than the present in the Holocene. How come?

davidmhoffer says:
February 6, 2013 at 9:58 am
mtobis (@mtobis) says:
February 6, 2013 at 9:20 am
Temperature during the snow event was 8 C above normal. Thus there is no intrinsic “logic fail” in considering it a warming-related event as you originally implied.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

So, Mr. Tobis, have I got it right? It snowed in Moscow. It has to get warmer to snow. Ergo, the snow in Moscow was caused by global warming? Is that right?

I think I’ll go talk with my grandson. He’s only 1 3/4, but at least I’ll be able to have a sensible conversion with him.

Oh, Mike – you and George Monbiot would get on like nobody’s business. You can find him at The Guardian, most days, tearing his hair out.

Looking at the Moscow graph, it appears to be in the -10 to 0C range for winter months on average, which is right in the sweet spot for significant snow accumulation in this Minnesotan’s experience. Now, if Moscow was usually running around, say -20C, and had warmed up into the sweet spot, Tobis might have a point. But I’m not seeing it from this data.

This is the first time I’ve written to WUWT, but the Tobis comments were so ridiculous I felt compelled to respond. I’ve lived in Canada all my life, first in southern Ontario and now Edmonton, and have experienced some brutal winters. Edmonton experienced it’s worst winter in three decades just two years ago and is experiencing another miserable winter this year. Tobis is clearly confused about this idea that deep cold brings less snowfall. While it is true that an extremely cold snap, and I mean colder than -25˚C, is usually associated with no snow, it’s always a short-lived phenomena. The cold snap lasts a day, or a week or maybe even two weeks, and it generally doesn’t snow, although we just experienced a blizzard in -33˚C a couple weeks ago. The bottom line is that when we have a warm winter we have little snow and when we have a cold winter we have lots of snow. If we wake up Dec. 30 and there’s a crapload of snow, we’ve already had a miserably cold winter. If we wake up March 30 with a crapload of snow, I’m ready to move to Florida. Tobis is grasping at straws if he tries to explain it any other way..

Why do guys like Tobis feel so smart and smug for explaining unpredicted events in the context of AGW as if it was expected all along? I remember the crowd saying that snow would be a thing of the past. I don’t remember a lot of them prediciting record snowfall as a result of a warming planet. But now it’s fashionable to call skeptics “idiots” and “illogical” because skeptics can’t see how a warming planet will cause record snowfall. Ah, excuse me, but when did the warmists predict such snowfall?: As a scientist, I can tell you that just after a major snowfall does not count.

I am perpetually amazed by alarmists failure to see the inevitable coming of snow each winter,
tornadoes each spring, heat waves in the summer, tropical storms every “hurricane season”, and floods during “monsoon season”.

I’m even more amazed that they believe taxes could somehow make bad weather disappear forever.

Snow Depth Anomaly
Posted on January 7, 2012 by Michael Tobis • 6 Comments
“Flowers are sprouting in January in New Hampshire, the Sierra Mountains in California are nearly snow-free, and lakes in much of Michigan still have not frozen. It’s 2012, and the new year is ringing in another ridiculously wacky winter for the U.S. In Fargo, North Dakota yesterday, the mercury soared to 55°F, breaking a 1908 record for warmest January day in recorded history. More than 99% of North Dakota had no snow on the ground this morning, and over 95% of the country that normally has snow at this time of year had below-average snow cover….”http://planet3.org/2012/01/07/snow-depth-anomaly/

“But big snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic or the South, particularly in El Nino years, are not evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change either. They are not the sort of thing we particularly expect more of because of human interference. At best it seems to me that the case is uncertain.”

I stand by this, which you should take as support for a position you have taken.

“Mike Tobis can’t make up his mind about snow and AGW, like the weather itself, he’s fickle”

Nonsense. The mid-Atlantic and South are not in the frigid zone. Moscow is. Nothing fickle about it. I’m not always perfectly clear, but in this case all you have to do is read carefully.

To summarize:

Under normal conditions of the past few millennia, continental high latitude locations get most of their snow in late fall and early spring. (This includes Wisconsin, by the way, but not coastal Alaska.)

More temperate locations get into the near-freezing conditions needed for large snowfall in winter. Mountains and cold coastal areas (including downwind of very large unfrozen lakes) can get big snows all winter.

Heavy snow in Moscow in February requires unusual warmth and mocking anyone for connecting it to what you all insist on calling “global warming” is nonsense.

Arguing one way or the other is not the issue I am raising; we can fling charts and graphs at each other about that if you like.

Dismissing it as absurd on its face is the issue. You ought to know better even if some of your readers don’t.

mtobis (@mtobis) says:
M. Tobis – February 6, 2013 at 8:19 am
…February snow in Moscow means that February in Moscow is more likely to be anomalously warn than anomalously cold.
—————————————
How about it’s within the normal temperature range where snow would/could occur in Moscow? I doubt that a snowy February in Moscow is unprecedented.

mtobis (@mtobis) says:
February 6, 2013 at 9:20 am
Temperature during the snow event was 8 C above normal.
*******************************
Snowy days in winter are generally warmer than clear days. Days without clouds permit more shortwave radiation in, and more longwave radiation out. Since winter nights are longer than sunlight hours, clear skies have a net cooling effect. (The opposite is true in summer.)

Snowstorms, of course, bring cloudy conditions, which don’t permit the earth to radiate as much heat away during the long winter nights, and therefore tend to provide warmer weather. Your statement provides no meaningful information to the issue at hand.

Heh, nice job Anthony! In December I wrote a short post with a couple of graphs and trends, temp and snow. It’s proof positive of the aggregate of the warmists predictions. Sometimes, when there’s less snow, they say the warming causes less snow, when we have a bit more snow, they say the warming causes more snow. Of course, there hasn’t been anywarming in the last 16 years, so ……

At any rate, if you combine the statements, then obviously we end up with moreless snow, which is related to the warmcold phenom we see in the winter and the wetdry phenom we see in the summers. :) For just a bit different graphical represention, one can go here.

When Dana graduates from his scooter to a proper motorcycle he’ll be ready to join the ranks of the proper scientists … until then he’ll continue to be a latte sucking wimp on a moped. I kick snow in your face lil’ boy !

Alexei Kokorin, director of the climate and energy program at WWF Russia, is the same person who claimed that malaria never occurred in Russia before late 20th century warming. He claimed that malaria for the first time entered Russia because of global warming in 1990′s.

Mr. KOKORIN: (Through translator) There were no registered cases of malaria in the Moscow region until the 1970s. Since then, we’ve seen 400,000 cases of so-called three-day malaria.

Now back to the real world.

In contrast, in countries that lagged in these changes, malaria did not decline “spontaneously” [36]. In the Soviet-block countries, for example, from Poland to eastern Siberia, major epidemics occurred throughout the 19th century and the disease remained one of the principal public health problems for the entire first half of the 20th century. Indeed, in the 1920s, in the wake of massive social and economic disruption, a pandemic swept through the entire Soviet Union.

Looking at cities listed for Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota (because they are all listed right there together) virtually every one has their highest snow total in January or February. I think I saw one that was December, and you could possibly argue that is technically Fall I suppose.

That one statement tells me you have no idea what you are talking about.

They cannot conceive of the possibility that unusually heavy winter snow is connected with less than usual winter cold in cold zones, something that pretty much all of us who grew up in frigid zones understand perfectly well. They are so confused that they find this perfectly ordinary fact of mundane reality grounds for mockery.

mtobis (@mtobis) says:
February 6, 2013 at 1:06 pm
Straw man. All I said was that the snow in Moscow is NOT evidence AGAINST global warming, which is contrary to the original article here.

Two fairly opposing claims in a single day, Michael, lets not strain yourself there.

From malaria control to eradication: The WHO perspective
Since first recognized as a distinct disease, the distribution of malaria has contracted progressively (Figure 1). Until the mid-19th century, malaria was endemic in most countries its distribution in the northern hemisphere reached as far as the arctic circle, and an estimated 90% of the world’s population lived in malarious areas; ….

Discussions of the potential impact of human-induced global warming frequently include malaria, a disease widely perceived as tropical. Articles in the popular and scientific press have predicted that warmer temperatures will result in malaria transmission in Europe and North America (7-12). Such predictions, often based on simple computer models, overlook malaria’s history; until recently, malaria was endemic and common in many temperate regions, and major epidemics extended as far north as the Arctic Circle (13).

Famous science writer and AGW advocate John Gribbin even speculates that King James (he of Bible fame) may have died of malaria in 1625.

rgbatduke says:
February 6, 2013 at 8:41 am
……We could probably do this without the vaccine if we put one tenth of the money we’ve wasted on carbon trading and ameliorating AGW into the aggressive treatment of the disease and the aggressive economic development of the impoverished peoples of the parts of the world where the disease thrives….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are missing the point entirely. The idea is to kill off the surplus human population, the ‘useless eaters’ and Malaria does that quite nicely.

No that is not sarcasm unfortunately. Eugenics has been with us for over a century and was still practiced in the USA in to the late seventies AFTER the ban on DDT. As the last excerpt shows Eugenics is still not dead and buried.

Eugenics was the brainchild of Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. Fabian founder Beatrice Webb said eugenics was “the most important question” of all.

How Eugenics Poisoned the Welfare State
… Beatrice Webb regarded eugenics as ‘the most important question’ of all, while her husband revealed the statist and dirigiste character of the movement with his declaration that ‘no eugenicist can be a laissez faire individualist… he must interfere, interfere, interfere!’ Even for George Bernard Shaw, ‘the only fundamental and possible Socialism’ was ‘the socialisation of the selective breeding of Man’.

In the years leading up to the first world war Leonard Darwin set about lobbying the government to act. He wanted to set up flying squads of scientists, armed with powers of arrest over the poor, to tour the country weeding out the ‘unfit’. Those who were found wanting by these tribunals were to be segregated in special colonies or sterilised…

[Fabian] H.G. Wells, vented his frustration and indignation in a direct address to the working class. ‘We cannot go on giving you health, freedom, enlargement, limitless wealth, if all our gifts to you are to be swamped by an indiscriminate torrent of progeny,’ he complained, ‘…and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us.’ …

Eugenics was no quickly passing fad. The Eugenics Society reached its peak, in terms of membership, during the 1930s, and the cusp of the following decade saw the zenith of its prestige. The [Fabian] economist John Maynard Keynes served on the society’s governing council and was its director from 1937 to 1944. Once again, this was no casual hobby. As late as 1946 Keynes was still describing eugenics as ‘the most important and significant branch of sociology’. ….

The principal manifestations of eugenics are racism and abortion; eugenics is the basis for “scientific racism” and laid the foundation for legalizing abortion. It is the driving force behind euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, and embryo and fetal research. It is the driving force in global population policy, which is a key element in American foreign policy. It is the force driving much of the environmentalist movement, welfare policy, welfare reform, and health care. It is found in anthropology, sociology, psychology—all the social sciences. It is reflected in much American literature, especially science fiction. So it is worth some study….

Julian Huxley, [another Fabian] the first Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and a member of the Eugenics Society: “We must face the fact that now, in this year of grace, the great majority of human beings are substandard: they are undernourished, or ill, or condemned to a ceaseless struggle for bare existence; they are imprisoned in ignorance or superstition. We must see to it that life is no longer a hell paved with unrealized opportunity. In this light, the highest and most sacred duty of man is seen as the proper utilization of the untapped resources of human beings.”

“I find myself inevitably driven to use the language of religion.” Huxley continued, “For the fact is that all this does add up to something in the nature of a religion: perhaps one might call it Evolutionary Humanism. The word ‘religion’ is often used restrictively to mean belief in gods; but I am not using it in this sense…I am using it in a broader sense, to denote an overall relation between man and his destiny, and one involving his deepest feelings, including his sense of what is sacred. In this broad sense, evolutionary humanism, it seems to me, is capable of becoming the germ of a new religion, not necessarily supplanting existing religions but supplementing them.”4

The Population Council, one of the new eugenics organizations that emerged after World War II, no longer spoke of eugenics as a religion, but launched “studies relating to the social, ethical and moral dimensions” of population studies, recognizing that these questions involved matters “of a cultural, moral and spiritual nature.”5 The new field of bioethics is a response to issues raised by eugenics.6 Bioethics is based on situation ethics, which was developed largely by Joseph Fletcher, a member of the American Eugenics Society…..

Having a member of the Eugenics Society as the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) certainly helps explain why not much progress has been made in lifting third world countries out of poverty despite seventy years of pour tax paper dollars into the effort.

Eugenics was not restricted to the UK either. From our home state of North Carolina there was the North Carolina Eugenics Board and Margaret Mead, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

North Carolina Eugenics Board
… the sterilization laws were passed in 1919 and 1929, the Eugenics Board was organized in July 1933. In four short months, the Board started receiving petitions to sterilize North Carolinians. From 1933 until 1977, the year the Board closed and the eugenics program in North Carolina ended, the state government had sterilized approximately 7,600 individuals (male and female and white and black).

…. North Carolina was the only state to include non-institutionalized citizens.…

Margaret Mead Speaks at First Earth Day
On April 22, 1970, noted anthropologist and outspoken environmentalist Margaret Mead inaugurates the first Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems.

WHO IS
MAURICE STRONG?
It is instructive to read Strong’s 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992. Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise hell at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe.

Others credit Mead

Where The Global Warming Hoax Was Born
“Global Warming” is, and always was, a policy for genocidal reduction of the world’s population. The preposterous claim that human-produced carbon dioxide will broil the Earth, melt the ice caps, and destroy human life, came out of a 1975 conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, organized by the influential anthropologist Margaret Mead, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in 1974.

This recent articles show Eugenics has just morphed into “overpopulation imperils the Earth’s future” or “Global Swarming”

The “population bomb” is creeping back onto the environmental agenda….
After the scandals of India’s forced vasectomies and China’s draconian one-child policy, such views became too hot to express in progressive circles. But they didn’t altogether go away, and now more and more people are blaming the “p-word” for climate change and rising oil and food prices.

“New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears,” warned the Wall Street Journal back in March. “Philippines Population Climbs; Food Problems Loom,” Reuters offered the following month. The online magazine Slate summed it up neatly with a recent headline: Global Swarming. And in an accompanying piece on this page Paul and Anne Ehrlich return to the barricades citing the twin perils of overconsumption and overpopulation.

As the first article sited states:

So what went wrong with a welfare state that was supposed to make ‘ignorance, squalor and want’ things of the past, and guarantee greater social integration? Or have we simply misunderstood what that project was really about?

And then there is his certain knowledge of where skeptics live.
This is not a serious person.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually his comment about where skeptics live is vastly entertaining. Think about it. Anthony, I and Gallopingcamel to name just a few have MOVED SOUTH.

As for blizzards, I almost died due to a blizzard and whiteout conditions when walking home from the school bus stop at age six. I still have problems from the frost bite. So bring on the warming it sure beats the heck out of cold!

> From the 15th century onwards, malaria was endemic along the coasts and estuaries of south-east England, the Fenlands, and estuarine and marshland coastal areas of northern England.

A most peculiar observation. Having lived in the Fenlands for more than two years, and another four years in the estuarine areas of Scotland, I have not once been bitten by a mosquito. I have seen some, but they were not of the blood-sucking kind. Nobody around here uses mosquito screens and they are not even sold at stores. I realise the fens were drained centuries ago, but there is still a lot of water everywhere that from the looks of it would make any mosquito happy. And the climate is so mild they could breed all year round. It is very puzzling that they don’t, and nobody I asked could give me an answer.

That’s a very pleasant contrast to all other places I lived in and visited, where harassment by mosquitoes was the norm.

Well, this is a first. I actually think (and have commented at P3) that I think Tobis may be correct and you may be wrong. Growing up in Decatur Illinois we often heard the phrase ‘too cold to snow.’ Usually with an expletive involved.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SWAG

Humidity modifies the temperature so the day/night temperature swings are much shallower therefore you are going to have much colder nights when it is dry. It is not that it is too cold to snow, it is that the moisture causes the temperature to be higher.

During the period 1900-2012 there were 29 winters in Moscow that had annual mean winter temperatures of -10 C or lower.and there was a lot of snow . One cold winter every four years . During the 1920’s , 6 of the 10 years were that cold .There have been none since 1987. So as soon as we get back to some winters that are closer to the past norm for an entire century for Moscow, suddenly global warming is being blamed on the extra snow. Well we better get used to this colder weather and extra snow that comes with it . There will be more of this for the next 20-30 years , not every year but much more frequently than the last 2 1/2 decades . Global warming had very little to do with this cold weather and the occasional extra heavy snow levels 100 years ago and it has little to do with it now . What nonsense.

In 2001, the much-vaunted authority on all things climate, the IPCC stated that “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms”.
But now that Mother Nature has refused to cooperate, the Alarmists have reversed themselves.
It seems that what they really meant was that they will actually increase them and make them more severe.
Same game, different rules, and new goal posts. Must be nice.

You really shouldn’t try to cover up errors with more errors and some added lies.

Maybe you think you are being unclear, but your choice of words reveals that you are just being a sanctimonious fool and using the issue as an excuse to slog off on skeptics in general. Your comments about “deniers” and where they live and warm climate etc, have no basis in reality, and your insistence of “all I said was” doesn’t jibe with your original printed claims.

There’s no connection that you’ve demonstrated between the snow in Moscow and global warming, and you’ve offered nothing but sputtering rhetoric and condescension instead of substance to back up your ridiculous claims. This was a weather event, formed in the clash of air masses, cold and dry -vs- moist and warm, just as snow has formed since weather on Earth began. It is a simple case of patterns, much like the Russian heat wave during the summer of 2010.

Here in the image below, we have a meridional S-N flow pattern, pulling in warm air and moisture ahead of a low, which has been fairly persistent throughout the winter. Moscow has received several similar episodes of overrunning precipitation, with Moscow wedged between strong high pressure to its east and low pressure to its west. Its a persistent pattern driven funnel effect, nothing more.

If there was zonal flow instead, no big snow events would be happening in Moscow. As it stands, warmer moister air must be drawn northward to produce that sort of snow event.

This image from WeatherBell.com is a GFS model forecast, and it shows more snow to likely hit Moscow Friday as warmth/moisture from low pressure driven advection is drawn northward. Rinse, repeat, and you have a snow machine.

It was not a climate event, because as I demonstrated, there is no evidence of a longer trend for more snow in the area. There is also no evidence that the pump was “primed” for more snow by global warming.

The only reason this is an issue now is that you and others are losing the climate sensitivity argument due to lack of observed warming, and you and others are looking for linkages where there are none to be had. If you have something of substance (data, graphs, etc) to prove your point, you are welcome to post them here.

Otherwise your comments are just opinionated noise from somebody who doesn’t get the difference between weather events and climate, except when it suits you.

Good comment on the insulating value of snow. I used to collect ground temperature information for designing foundations, road, water and sewer systems. I helped write a few design manuals for my company and a some government agencies. We used to monitor ground temperatures to depth in various ground conditions, under roadways, in the ditch and in shoulders and at bridges. The frost depth clearly correlated with snow depth. Under roadways in one location where I was doing studies the winter frost often reached 13 feet under highways where the snow was cleared and in the adjacent ditch it would seldom exceed 5 feet. In sheltered areas with trees and good snow cover it would be even less. On the farm, snow cover makes a huge difference to the soil temperature in the spring, lack of snow cover makes the soil temperatures recover more slowly as the frost takes longer to come out of the ground. And I still shovel snow against some of the walls of my house and over my window wells in the walkout basement to enhance insulation even though the walls are over a foot thick with 8 inches of insulation.

I too trudged through those snows in 1978 at Purdue. The snow on either side of the streets and sidewalks was a meter high or more. Coming from Northern Indiana in the shadow of Lake Michigan I was used to snow and cold but that was something completely other. I remember breathing as fast as possible, hoping the extra CO2 I exhaled would warm up the atmosphere a bit.

Perfectly summed up in Anthony’s 6:04 post. It doesn’t even take someone with climate/weather background to punch hole after hole in his tripe. I’m just an engineer with google skills and I think I fairly comprehensively debunked his “continental high latitude locations get most of their snow in late fall and early spring” BS.

Well, this is a first. I actually think (and have commented at P3) that I think Tobis may be correct and you may be wrong. Growing up in Decatur Illinois we often heard the phrase ‘too cold to snow.’ Usually with an expletive involved.

Makes for an interesting conversation.

Nowhere on this planet where humans can live is it “too cold to snow”.

“Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
— Dr David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia

And continues to the point where snow is most common between a fairly narrow temperature band about the freezing point of water. It then suffers from a known condition, a boundary condition between fronts (there is a meteorological term, Anthony, help me out here) where, if I remember correctly, there is a compression zone between the two fronts. Raise the pressure of a gas and what happens Charles Gay, Lussac? Then bring on the snow.

On Christmas Eve 1982, a few friends and I had ripped up Peaks to Peaks highway in Colorado’s Front Range in T-shirt 70’s temps on our big sportbikes. The next morning I awoke to not just a white Christmas in downtown Denver, but 5 feet of it. If 8C converts to 14.4F and we take the ambient temps we were experiencing in our T-shirts sitting at some 8,000 feet altitude, then the temperature had to drop a few multiples of 8C to get temperatures low enough to deposit such a think blanket of snow, and keep it there for weeks…….

That is the first logical absurdity which includes the subsurdities of children not knowing what snow is say in Europe, Britain over the past few winters, and yes Moscow now, or simply that you cannot have it both ways, Both cannot be right. Another subsurdity is that the contact band between two fronts is commonly compressive, which would leave one to suspect, that if the gas laws are right, air heats when compressed, and this globe-trotting geologist has experienced this all over the planet. I tend to be surprised when I do not note this phenomenon during a frontal passage. The final subsurdity here is that I see your 8C and raise you 2x8C at ~8,000 feet. My hole card being that Denver is ~3,000 feet lower, meaning I might have another 8C (making 3 of them) left to bet.

The second logical absurdity lies in the 4th dimension, time. In laying full claim to this being an absurdity, we will first assume that you are correct, now, not sometime in the past. But since this is about this new variable time, we are obligated to consider perhaps when we live. At a roughly half-precession old extreme interglacial. Five of the last six interglacials have each lasted about half a precession cycle. In order to test your hypothesis, we will now take a short excursion in time to the last interglacial, MIS-5e or the Eemian. Next we will dissemble a few choice quotes from the abstract of just one paper:

“…the end of the Last Interglacial seems to be characterized by evident climatic and environmental instabilities….”

Environmental instabilities…….hmmmmm. Did Moscow just experience one of those? And “evident ” ones at that!

“sequences indicate simultaneously a strong increase of environmental oscillations during the very end of the Last Interglacial and the beginning of the Last Glaciation.”

So the last interglacial experienced strong environmental oscillations right at its very end. So Mr. Tobis, would the recent Moscow strong environmental oscillation at the half-precession old Holocene remotely suggest that….

“The pronounced climate and environment instability during the interglacial/glacial transition could be consistent with the assumption that it is about a natural phenomenon, characteristic for transitional stages.”

?

But the time domain is not yet done with us, is it? We have an engineering problem to solve at the climate poker table. The IPCC raised the stakes in the game to +0.59M sea level rise by 2100 (AR4, 2007). The consensus Anthropogenic worst case signal. Until AR5 comes out, you just went all in, didn’t you? I look over my post-MPT cards. I make some climate noise when I see your +0.59M rise by 2100 and raise you +6.0M at the end-Eemian.

The signal to noise ratio is informing. If we round up the IPCC AR4 worst case estimate to +0.6M, it still comes in at just 10% of what was most recently end extreme interglacial climate noise, if you will. That appears to be the minimum natural end-extreme-interglacial climate noise. If we use the worst case estimate for the end-Eemian of +45M, the signal to noise ration drops to just 1.333…% I could even allow you to raise your debt limit to +45M, and still be able to raise you to possibly +52M, making the anthropogenic signal to end-extreme interglacial noise almost 1% (http://lin.irk.ru/pdf/6696.pdf)

Which necessarily means that if you are 100% correct your best current consensus bet comes in at just 1-10% of the normal, natural end-extreme interglacial climate pot. You need to up your game in AR5, at least that much is a given.

Great post. With all the discussion surrounding temperatures during the snow storms, how come nobody ever mentions that precipitation is an exothermic event? I remember introduction to chemistry in high school. We actually quantified how much energy was released by a mole of h2o transitioning from a vapor to a liquid. A snow storm that huge must release a lot of heat. In fact, the hydrological cycle must be an immense heat pump when you factor in all those tropical clouds…

Looks like a lot of snow for us in the Northeast – great news for the skiers…

—

Blizzard to Bury New England at Week’s End

Two storms will merge quickly enough to bring colder air, heavy snow and increasing wind to New England. Some areas will be hit with an all-out blizzard and a couple of feet of snow.

The worst of the storm will hit the Boston-area late Friday and Friday night and will wind down Saturday morning. However, lingering effects from blowing and drifting snow, blocked roads and other travel delays are likely to linger into much of the weekend.

My experience (37 yrs) in the midwest US is that the biggest snows are the result of a really cold front coming in, so the temps drop as the snow comes in to the point that kids won’t go sledding on the 1 foot of snow we just got, whereas a warmer front coming from the south only drops some snow, not the really big ones. Of course I am talking depth, not area.
The real fallacy of Tobis is that years with a big snow AREA anomaly must include snow being farther south, which means it must be colder than average or those areas would have had rain.

When water vapour condenses or crystallizes, it dumps its latent heat into the surrounding air (where else?). The fallen snow thereafter causes cooling, as mentioned above by several. But during the snow event, the snow is causing local warming. Exactly (as usual) the reverse causality direction to that touted by warmists like Tobin and his ilk.

This appears to be another of those “teachable moments” that someone whould take advantage of. What finally “falls” may be rain, snow, sleet, or freezing rain depending on a number of factors. Any comments on the Bergeron Process, the environmental lapse rate, super-cooling, phase changes, etc.?

The latest heavy snow fall in Moscow is not just a single weather event but part of an entire winter trend in Russia which already started in November and could go to February and March. A negative AO is part of this cold weather cause.

November 2012 snow storm
Moscow’s City Hall said it expects the snowstorm, which is due to continue at least until Friday morning, to be the biggest in November in 50 years.

December 2012 cold weather[-30 Cin Moscow]
Coldest in 70 years in Eastern Russia.[temperatures hit -50C in Siberia
”In the end of 2012, Russia saw extreme winter not witnessed since 1938. The coldest-ever December in Russia led to the evacuation of hundreds of people in Siberia, where temperatures fell below -50 degrees Celsius; Moscow also saw its coldest night ever for the season.”

January 2013 snow storm
Norilsk (Photo from bigpicture.ru)
On Friday, Moscow was on a verge of traffic collapse as more than 10 inches of snow fell on the city, which is more than half of January’s average.

Re.’Global Warming’ is, and always was, a policy for genocidal reduction of the world’s population.”

There’s now a hitch in the population/climate argument giddyup. New research suggests that the globe’s population will soon level off and begin declining (see below).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, modern civilization leads to reduced birth rates, unfortunately that does not stop Paul Ehrlich, Obama’s Science Czar’s co-author, from believing that overpopulation imperils the Earth’s future. link

Facts are never allowed to get in the way of a good ‘crisis’ that can be used as propaganda.

Arctic sea ice is an important component of the global climate system. The polar ice caps help to regulate global temperature by reflecting sunlight back into space. White snow and ice at the poles reflects sunlight, but dark ocean absorbs it. Replacing bright sea ice with dark ocean is a recipe for more and faster global warming. The Autumn air temperature over the Arctic has increased by 4 – 6°F in the past decade, and we could already be seeing the impacts of this warming in the mid-latitudes, by an increase in extreme weather events. Another non-trivial impact of the absence of sea ice is increased melting in Greenland. We already saw an unprecedented melting event in Greenland this year , and as warming continues, the likelihood of these events increase.

Just to keep things in perspective . Ottawa, Ontario, Canada’s capital had 432 cm of snow during the 2007/2008 winter. Ottawa gets about 236 cm of snow annually. By the end of January 2008, it had 223 cm to compare with Moscows 216 cm by the same date this year . No one blamed this on global warming , nor should they . Nature sometime exceeds it’s typical annual amounts , An examination of snow falls for any region will clearly demonstrate the variability of the snowfall over an extended period .This has absolutely nothing to do with global warming . I think some of these alarmist climate scientists were only born yesterday and know nothing about climate outside their own little crib.

Charity U. Stout says:February 7, 2013 at 10:16 pm
The ocean dumps heat at the north pole when the water is exposed. The only time it gets sun is in the summer when it has ice. The angle of incidence of the sun is too low to have an impact at other times of the year. We do not have an increase in extreme weather events.

To add a bit more to the Eugenics angle.
Wikipedia has a fair entry on the history of the Poor Laws in England.
This history is fairly well documented back to the 1400s, with the economic tides following the Black Plague.
Christians have always accepted charitable activity as a component of showing the fruits of living in Christ. Back in the day, just about everyone in Europe was Christian by faith, social influence, or royal decree. Christianity includes the concept of the sojourner – who we are to treat decently, since the Israelites were once sojourners in Egypt.
So, the villagers of the various hamlets had some sort of mandate to provide charitable relief to vagabonds, vagrants, wanderers, etc.
At a certain point, possibly as a some level of general wealth and economic stability emerged following the Plague, you could be a vagabond and have a pretty good life. At the expense of the locals.

Do an odd job here and there.

Swipe a loaf of bread or skip a meal check when opportunity presented itself.

So, you eventually wore out your welcome. You were arrested or run out of town.

Poor Laws, and Poor Houses, and Alms Houses, developed as a more formal way to deal with the undesirable vagrants. A legal system was declared, with the local magistrate in charge of seeing that things were in place as dictated by law, and the actual plan was aassigned to the local vicar. Various revenue-raising schemes were used – yes, taxes. This diverges from Christianity. But the vicar had the legal mandate nonetheless. Yes, close integration of church and state. The local vicar was a natural, having the Biblical view and mandate.

At first, alms-houses were shelters, but evolved to offer shelter and meals in the evening, but requiring work. The value of decent roads was being realized, and that was often accomplished with crushed rock. Guess who was offered the job of crushing rocks by sledgehammer?

Hence the tradition of “breaking rocks” assigned to the community of ne’er-do-wells.

Poor houses were settings for care that were delivered with a mix of charity and contempt. There are plenty of speeches and editorials noting how these vagrants and ne’er-do-wells were lazy, inclined to pilfer, and how the females were inconsiderate toward the local society in the way they would express fertility. Also, they spread disease.

And people soon figured out that these interventions – forcing hard work in hopes that they woudl climb up the economic ladder to easier better paying work – did not work at all. A decent poor-house system would attract vagabonds.

These laws kept being modified. Including declarations of residency claim by family or tenure – at least have people helping “their own,” versus vagrants from far away.

Largely, the rhetoric was not racial – these were all whites.

The rhetoric was class-based.The working and productive class were bothered to support the lazy, pilfering, reproducing class. The rhetoric was moral – not contributing, not living a proper Godly life.

Along comes science, and, as noted above in an earlier comment, Galton. Galton and the scientifick-y zeitgeist claimed that the laziness, the tendency to theft, and the fecundity were genetically based matters of natural science.

Galton coined the term ‘Eugenics,’ in the late 1800s, around the time that the Poor Laws were being abolished. Frank socialism was coming of age back then to replace it. But eugenics held promise to FINALLY rid the good people of merry old England of these pesky ne’er-do-wells.

So, the sentiment was the same, the social/policy issue was the same, but the solutions were no longer moral, but scientific: identifiy the less-fit, encourage birth control, and other interventions came along. All justified as “scientific.”

Fast forward to today. Our leading missions in the world are to make birth control and abortion widely available in the dependent-class countries. We cover our classism with a scientifick-y mantle of “over-population,” “demography,” etc., and still with noble, moral concepts of nobless oblige and charity, optimistically delivered by the progressive ideal of the promise of “science.”